Around the Mosque of the Conqueror - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 229

row of shops, two little cemeteries with open türbes, a şadırvan, a
sebil and a çeşme, all arranged with an almost romantic disorder. The
street façade consists first of the open walls of the small graveyards,
divided by the projecting curve of the sebil. All of these have fine
brass grilles, those of the türbe nearest the entrance gate being quite
exceptionally beautiful specimens of seventeenth-century grillework.
Next comes the entrance gate with an Arabic inscription giving the
date 1698. The çeşme just beyond it with its reservoir behind is a
somewhat later addition, for its inscription records that it was a
benefaction of the Şeyh-ül Islam Mustafa Efendi in 1739. Finally
there is a row of four shops with an entrance between them leading
to the two large rooms of the mektep on the upper floor. On entering
the courtyard, one has on the left the first of the open türbes - the
one with the exceptionally handsome grilles - and then the columned
portico of the mosque: this portico runs around seven of the eight
sides of the mosque and frames it in a rectangle. The mosque itself
is without a minaret and its primary object was clearly to serve as a
lecture hall for the medrese. It is severely simple, its dome adorned
only with some rather pale stencilled designs probably later than the
building itself.
The far side of the courtyard is formed by the 17 cells of the
medrese with their domed and columned portico. Occupying the
main part of the right-hand side is the library building. It is in two
storeys, but the lower floor serves chiefly as a water reservoir, the
upper being reached by a flight of outside steps around the side and
back of the building, leading to a little domed entrance porch on
the first floor. The medallion inscription on the front of the library
records a restoration in 1755 by Hüseyin Paşa's daughter after the
earthquake of 1894 which ruined the complex; the manuscripts it
had contained were removed and are now in the Süleymaniye library.
The right-hand corner of the courtyard is occupied by the shops and
the mektep above them: note the amusing little dovecotes in the form
of miniature mosques on the façade overlooking the entrance gate.
A columned şadırvan stands in the middle of the courtyard. This
charmingly irregular complex is made still more picturesque by the
warm red of the brickwork alternating with buf-coloured limestone,